The Royal Inclusio – Love (3)

 

 

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13.

 

This is the love whereby Jesus loves us, and it is the love whereby we are to love one another. While John 3:16 is a message for the world, 1 John 3:16 is a message for the People of Jesus:

 

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

 

Do we wake up every morning seeking to serve our brothers and sisters? Are our lives oriented toward others? Our Upper Room journey began with Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, and with the commandment, “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you” (John 13:14 – 15).

 

Is washing the feet of our brethren our Way of Life? Are we learning to serve one another? Are we teaching new disciples to serve one another? Those of us who have been following Jesus for years, is the depth of our service greater today than yesterday? Are we serving the least of our brethren – or do we only focus on those in the spotlight, or those who will reciprocate? Do we serve when no one is looking?

 

Note that the characteristic of our love and service is the surrender of our lives. Are we living for ourselves or for others? Are our congregations living for themselves or for others? Our marriages? Our families?

“In every way it has come to this, that what one now calls Christianity is precisely what Christ came to abolish.” Soren Kierkegaard.

 

When we consider the self-centeredness of North American Christianity we might be challenged by Kierkegaard’s statement. So much of our teaching and preaching is about the sovereign self, about our “best lives now,” about our wants and needs and desires and pleasure and affluence. Then there is that element of the professing church which thinks that if it believes the right thing that it is enough – but Jesus does not tell us that if we believe the right thing we will be His friends and disciples, He tells us that we must do what He commands us.

 

What does He command us? To love one another as He loves us, to lay down our lives for one another; to live in unity with one another in the Trinity. There is an orthodoxy that is dead, an orthodoxy that is parsimonious, an orthodoxy divorced from gentleness and grace – an orthodoxy Pharisaical.  Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63).

 

But this is not only the Way of Love, it is the Way of abiding Joy (John 15:11; 17:13). We will never find abiding joy in ourselves, but we will experience overflowing joy as our lives are orientated toward others in our dear Lord Jesus. What a tragedy that we have turned the Gospel into therapy, self – improvement, and entertainment. How sad that we have nationalized Jesus and politicized Him.

 

There is a sense in which our first question of the day should be, “How is Jesus calling me to die for others today?” As Paul writes:

 

“For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:11 – 12).

 

Again I ask, are our congregations living this Way? Is this our mindset? Our desire? Is it emanating from our souls?

 

Jesus says, “You are My friends, if you do what I command you.”

 

Are we His friends? Is there evidence to convict us?

 

The Royal Inclusio of Love, which Jesus gives us, requires everything; our hearts, our minds, our souls, our bodies, our desires, our wills. Let there be no mistake about this – following Jesus is all consuming, we place our lives on the altar to be consumed by Divine fire, and in losing our lives we find them in Jesus and in one another.

 

Anything less is not Biblical Christianity; anything less is not the Gospel – and let us not be so foolish as to think it is.

 

“And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:34 – 38, ESV.)